On Stranger Ways features Allison Wade, Volker Saul, Michael Pfisterer, Dan Devening, and Sterling Lawrence in collaboration with Christalena Hughmanick; a group of artists from the United States and Germany affiliated with the Chicago gallery devening projects + editions. The show, much like the work presented, is an aggregate of carefully selected and loosely connected ideas and materials assembled into a logical whole. Within the work of each artist, we recognize a desire to order, to make sense of the stuff each finds as they navigate the world. Order is a good word; it suggests an imposition of will, a rightness of placement and context. It happens through the dichotomies and juxtapositions that occasionally occur in the work; at other times, form is separated from context to arrive at essential new properties. The material-based work reflects strategies inherent to how research, experimentation and consideration lead to a resolute position. The artists are collecting, documenting, isolating, distilling and displaying; they’re also applying very subtle and poetic moves to their process to reveal something newly discovered. On Stranger Ways feels like a loosely woven fabric; the fibers are distinct but the composition they create has a beautiful sense of order and completeness.
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